Traditionally, consumer electronics devices have used proprietary control and communication interfaces, which significantly impair the ability of these devices to interact with one another. With such proprietary interfaces, the devices that may interact with one another must be from a common manufacturer or provide a highly related function. For example, certain stereo or home theater electronics components may be connected to facilitate common control and operation. However, such control rarely extends to cable boxes, televisions, computers, or telephony devices.
Given the rapid acceptance of the Internet and packet-based communications and the corresponding convergence of various types of media, including audio, video, voice, and data, there is an ever-increasing desire to provide multimedia capabilities through various devices in an integrated fashion. Unfortunately, the lack of effective integration techniques and the use of proprietary control and communication interfaces continue to provide a barrier to fully exploiting multimedia capabilities.
To further complicate matters, many consumer electronics devices employ wireless interfaces that use a frequency spectrum used by other devices. For example, many cordless telephones operate in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz spectrum. Other wireless devices, such as wireless networking devices using wireless local area network protocols set forth in the IEEE's 802.11 standards, also operate in the 2.4 GHz spectrum. As such, these devices often compete for the allocated spectrum and interfere with one another. Further, the use of different protocols prohibits these devices from being able to interact with one another.
Although networking and telephony applications are the predominant wireless technologies in the home, there is a movement to deliver audio and video to various speakers, controllers, receivers, and monitors or televisions. In addition to wirelessly delivering the media, the need to provide various types of media for multimedia sessions from the various devices in a coordinated fashion will require concerted control over the respective devices. As such, there is a need for a way to provide an efficient and effective integration and control of the various consumer electronics devices in an efficient and effective manner.